1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network advertisement delivery system for conducting sales management of articles on the Internet using a social network service system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional affiliate providing model to provide sales promotion commissions, i.e., affiliate using homepages on the Internet, a user having actually purchased an article or not having actually purchased an article writes a recommendation item to guide or lead potential purchasers to the associated site of the recommendation item.
Referring now to FIG. 1, description will be given of a conventional affiliate advertisement model.
As can be seen from FIG. 1, the model includes an affiliater 100 to receive an affiliate commission and a buyer 200 to purchase items. The affiliater 100 and the buyer 200 are different entities. The affiliater 100 registers in the affiliate system in steps (1) and (2) and sets a recommendation item in step (3). The buyer 200 refers via a web site 300 to items in a shop 400 in steps (4) and (5). The sales contract is made in steps (6) and (7). In steps (8) and (8′), a commission for sales promotion, that is, an amount of affiliate corresponding to the purchase of the sales contract is provided to the affiliater 100.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-56000 (document 1) describes a web server which manages a friend database for each subscriber and which promotes communications between friends among the subscribers for a smooth operation of the community. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-83213 (document 2) proposes a network advertisement method and a network advertisement system to efficiently advertise articles using web pages.
However, the conventional network advertisement delivery system has problems as below.
For example, there exists a problem of insufficient reliability. In the system, a user not having bought an article is also allowed to write a recommendation item. There possibly appears a person who poses as a customer in conspiracy with a seller to induce other customers to buy articles. This leads to the problem of reliability. In addition, sites of someone who keeps anonymity or who is not a friend of the user are unreliable.
Additionally, it also leads to a problem that whether the purchase has been carried out is not reflected on the reliability. There also exists a problem that the commission is provided according to a rating method irrespectively of the amount of purchase. In the affiliate systems available at present, it is not possible to provide the affiliate or commission to a plurality of affiliaters for one purchase of an article.
There does not exist a method to evaluate the rating of the affiliate to each of affiliaters according the amounts of purchase. In the actual commercial distribution and the existing affiliate systems, the amount of affiliate fluctuates along with the amount of new sales of articles. However, the rating is not changed, according to the sales amount in the past, for the affiliate with respect to the new sales event.
There also exists a problem in describing or inputting of a recommendation item. When terminals such as a cellular phone not suitable for the input operation of the recommendation item are used, it takes a considerably long time for the user to describe the recommendation item. A demand hence exists for a simple input method to write recommendation items.